


Miss Marple and the Unexpected Guest

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Agatha Christie's Marple (TV 2004), Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
Genre: At Bertram's Hotel, Bisexual Male Character, Dialogue Heavy, Episode Related, Espionage, Gen, Knitting, Minor Character(s), Multilingual Character, One Shot, Post-World War II, Scones, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27106333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: The latest television adaptation ofAt Bertram's Hotelupdated Ladislaus Malinowski from a somewhat clichéd thrill-seeker and ne'er-do-well to a taciturn, compassionate, bisexual Nazi-hunter... and did very little with that. I was fascinated, and distressed that he and Miss Marple were never given a chance at a proper conversation. So here, I give them just that.Tagged for canon as well as for the adaptation, as Miss Marple's speech patterns and preoccupations draw chiefly on Christie.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	Miss Marple and the Unexpected Guest

“If you please, miss,” said Annie, “there’s a strange gentleman at the door. To see you,” she added.

Miss Marple pondered the oddities of this message. Since Annie had started in her service, her silver-polishing had much improved, as had her hand in the kitchen. Her manner of announcing visitors was still idiosyncratic.

Miss Marple smiled encouragingly. “Since you say that he has come to call, I presume you have not left him standing outside the door as though he were a tradesman.”

“Oh no, miss; he’s in the hall.”

Miss Marple nodded briskly. “Good.” Annie was easily flustered; it was well to start out with something she could praise. “Now: a strange gentleman?”

“Well, miss, you said not to say ‘foreign’ as though it left a funny taste in my mouth, so I didn’t.”

Miss Marple raised her hand to cover a slight cough. “Indeed. Now, Annie: did the gentleman give you his name?” She expected this question to raise a fierce blush, a stammering confession or apology. Instead, Annie drew herself up very straight, put her shoulders back, and began to recite, with her eyes fixed on the wall behind her mistress.

“‘It is difficult to pronounce,’” said Annie, transforming her vowels in a truly astonishing manner, “‘and I am afraid that I have neglected to carry a card. Say to her that it is an acquaintance who happened to be passing by.’” Annie took a deep breath.

An acquaintance! and a nameless one. Miss Marple’s naturally lively curiosity had been no whit impaired by advancing age. Moreover, though Annie’s carefully-elicited announcement of the visitor had been less than illuminating, she feared that to keep her visitor waiting any longer would be to strain the limits of courtesy.

“Show him in, Annie.”

“But miss…! Yes, miss.”

Miss Marple frowned slightly over her knitting needles. At least Annie had obeyed. Whoever this visitor was — now being invited to divest himself of coat and hat — he had impressed Annie as being indubitably a gentleman, despite his ‘strangeness.’ And that final hesitation had suggested that this strangeness might be due to something other, something more, than merely being foreign.

“Ah.” Even standing to greet her saturnine visitor, Miss Marple found herself having to raise her chin slightly to meet his eyes. “Mr. Malinowski.” 

“Miss Marple.” He took one long stride into the room, and stopped. Partly because he looked uncertain of his next action, and partly on impulse, Miss Marple extended her hand. With obvious relief, Ladislaus Malinowski took two quick steps forward, and bent, and kissed it. His hostess looked thoughtfully at the dark, bowed head. An archaic gesture for a man of his age; but he made it as though it were natural and necessary to him. 

Straightening again to his full height, he smiled. “You think me extremely impertinent, perhaps.” 

“No,” said Miss Marple frankly. “No, merely unexpected. Shall I ring for tea?”

His smile was surprising, unpracticed. “Thank you.”

Amid the echoes of the silver bell, Miss Marple said: “Do sit down, Mr. Malinowski.”

He did not quite allow himself to drop into the chintz-covered armchair with its carefully pressed antimacassar. But he came close enough to doing so that Miss Marple examined her guest with sharpened attention. 

Aloud she said, to the maid in the doorway: “Tea, please, Annie. And some scones, if you can manage them.” Miss Marple fixed the girl with a keen look, and fervently hoped she would have the sense not to ask aloud if they had enough butter.

Annie looked skeptical, and sounded doubtful, but all she said was: “Yes, miss.”

Annie having shut the door, Miss Marple did not speak immediately, but picked up her knitting.

“She does not approve of me, I think,” remarked her guest. “Certainly not of my being offered scones,” he added, with a flash of humor.

“Mm.” Miss Marple knitted two more rows, and then observed: “Annie has been with me just three months. I’m afraid she mistrusts foreigners.”

“Ah.” His eyes kindled with mirth. “Nothing personal, then.” He enunciated the English expression with ironical emphasis.

“Quite.” Miss Marple continued to knit, and to watch her visitor: the long fingers beating a pianistic rhythm almost soundlessly against the armchair, the slightly pinched lines around the mouth. “I had a letter from Jane Cooper a few weeks ago,” she observed mildly.

“Jane Cooper?”

“My namesake at Bertram’s,” explained Miss Marple. “The clever little maid.”

“Ah yes.” Another twitch of a smile. “I found her in my rooms — an obvious but unlikely spy.”

“Oh dear.” Miss Marple counted her stitches. “I shan’t tell her she was obvious; I’m afraid she would be piqued.”

“Stuck to her story better than most,” Malinowski allowed. “Even came back to her pretext when it was all but plain that we were talking about something else. Made fun of herself for forgetting her keys. No, you may tell her that she was quite good, for one so unpracticed.”

Miss Marple smiled. “Which is high praise from an expert.”

This rendered her urbane visitor abashed. He dropped his eyes, and his fingers beat a more nervous tattoo. “Forgive me, Miss Marple,” he said at last. “It is… a presumption, to visit you like this. I… remembered the name of your village.”

“Ah,” said Miss Marple. She did not think that he was for a minute taken in by her polite pretense of being taken in. But they could maintain this double fiction a little while longer — at least until Annie brought in the tea. She continued gently, “It was a very mild presumption, if it was one: that I might be at home, that we might speak a little of shared acquaintances and shared experiences.” She dimpled at him. “Perhaps, even, that we might share a pot of tea.”

Ladislaus Malinowski cleared his throat. “I wish, Miss Marple, that I could confess to so innocent a hope. But as I say — ” here he took a deep breath — “I remembered the name of your village, and — ” He broke off, so abruptly that Miss Marple sat up straighter in her chair. But some moments later, a light rattle of china preceded Annie’s entry with the tea. 

“Ah, good, thank you, Annie, that’s lovely — nothing like a good tea, I always think; don’t you agree, Mr. Malinowski? — and sultanas in the scones, too, how nice. Yes, Annie, that will do nicely, thank you.” 

Miss Marple, whose keen hearing had not picked up on Annie’s well-trained step before she was at the door with the tea things, wondered about her guest’s alertness, maintained even here, in St. Mary Mead, in her second-best armchair. What she said was: “How do you take your tea, Mr. Malinowski?”

“Thank you, Miss Marple, black, one sugar.” The door closed behind Annie. Miss Marple’s guest took the teacup from her hands. “I owe you, I think, an explanation.”

Jane Marple raised her own teacup to her lips. “I would not presume to insist upon one, Mr. Malinowski.”

“Nevertheless.” He did not, at first, continue. She noticed the careful steadiness of his hand as he replaced his cup in his saucer. “Nevertheless,” said Ladislaus Malinowski again. Miss Marple waited. 

“Would it help,” she asked mildly, “if I observed that you were clearly living on your nerves, and that that, for me, was explanation enough?” 

The odd mouth quirked. “You are very perceptive, Miss Marple.”

“As are you — no, I am not flattering you, Mr. Malinowski, do have a scone, butter or jam? — but then you have to be, don’t you?” He raised one hand to his temple. “You’re not, forgive me, on the run or…”

“No.” He looked up, moistened his lips. “No, nothing like that.” He took another sip of his tea, and sighed. “But I am, I am afraid… rather at a loose end.”

“What an elegant expression that is,” said Miss Marple, beaming at him. “And what is it in Polish?”

He laughed; there was an edge to his laughter that his hostess did not like. “It is more blunt. _Nie wiem, co ze sobą począć_ : I don’t know what to do with myself. It means also… I do not know where to begin. I do not know how to conceive of how to begin.” He smiled wryly. “In very simple terms: my superiors tell me that I must take leave, that I have been too much, as you say, on my nerves.” He gave a slight shrug. “But where am I to go? So I came here.”

“Have another scone, Mr. Malinowski. More tea?”

“Thank you. Do you know,” he asked abruptly, “what _Entnazifizierung_ is, Miss Marple?”

She blinked twice. “I had a German governess, so I can guess.”

“Yes, well.” He swallowed, and put rather too much of the scone into his mouth. Eventually, he continued: “It is not very pretty, and it is not…”

“Not easy,” said Miss Marple, as if agreeing with something he had already said. “Justice, I think, never is; and there is a great deal of wickedness in the world.”

“Yes. Yes. So you have gone along with your nice white-collar job, even after the Anschluss, because you had three children to feed. And you copied out all the new orders and the new regulations and you did not ask about what happened to your neighbor’s children and… How much must such a person be punished? What must be done, to make them fit for society? To make a society — any society — on the ruins of… well, on the ruins?”

“I often think,” said Miss Marple, “that there is nothing so inconclusive as a war.”

“Yes.” Her guest drew in a sharp breath. “Yes, I… forgive me, I…”

“Not at all.” When his breathing continued to come too quickly, she added briskly: “Head between your knees if you feel faint.” The dark eyes flashed at her; but after another moment, he leaned his elbows upon his knees, and let his head fall heavily between his shoulders. 

Miss Marple replaced her teacup on the tray. She watched the rise and fall of his shoulders. “Annie won’t come in,” she said softly. “I have her that well-trained, at least.” Her joints and her chair creaked slightly as she got up. “Now I’m afraid that the brandy is kept only for medicinal purposes and I can’t vouch for its quality, but there’s always more tea if you prefer, and I find it really is very good for shock, the brandy, I mean. It’s curious, isn’t it, how shock sometimes doesn’t come over one all at once, and certainly in your line of work, dear me, it would be of the utmost importance not to let it. Brandy,” concluded Miss Marple.

Malinowski took the glass in both hands, the long fingers covering hers for a moment. When he had taken his first swallow, and his first deep breath, what he said surprised her. “Such soft hands,” he murmured, his eyes still closed. “Soft hands had my grandmother also.”

“Indeed?” Miss Marple took her knitting back up.

At length, he spoke again, his head still tipped back against the antimacassar. “I did not come,” he said, “because you resemble my grandmother. She was… for one thing, she was a very stout woman.” Very fleetingly he smiled. “I came because, though you may think it foolish, I thought we rather resembled each other, you and I.”

“Ah,” said Miss Marple. “Pursuers of justice.”

“It sounds arrogant, perhaps.”

Miss Marple tutted. “Now that, Mr. Malinowski, is the first foolish thing I’ve heard you say. What could be arrogant in such a pursuit? Provided, of course, that one does not become too certain of how justice ought to be meted out.”

“Yes.” He leaned forward to place his brandy glass on the table. “You mean at Bertram’s hotel?”

“You mean when you threatened that Nazi with a revolver?” His eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. “Oh no; I would have been perfectly prepared to swear that you shot only to protect poor little Herr Muti; after all, that dreadful man might have been armed.”

Malinowski regarded her very thoughtfully. “Indeed?”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple placidly. “No,” she continued, “I meant what you’ve been doing lately. This _Entnazifizierung_.”

“Your pronunciation is very good,” he remarked; but his face clouded. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps that is what… bothered me, the certainty of men who were not there, and governments which have decided that they know best for the world.”

“Always so dangerous. I imagine,” said Miss Marple, “that you were a translator.”

“Yes.”

“Mm.” She worried that he might, these confidences concluded, draw back into himself, and decided on a confidence of her own. “I did a bit of nursing, volunteer of course, in the first war.” She waited a moment, to see how her guest would take this; he merely looked at her very steadily, while maintaining the absolute stillness of hunter or prey. “Dear me,” said Miss Marple, “yes; all that antiseptic efficiency after so much… well.” She counted her stitches. “I used to think that General Haig ought to be shown round the wards, you know. Not one of those formal tours of inspection, but just to follow us around, see the washing up.”

Malinowski laughed softly. “We all have our fantasies, I suppose. To keep from going mad.”

“I wrote him a letter of invitation.”

“Did you indeed? No reply, I suppose.”

“No. Shall I have Annie take away the tea things?” He made an acquiescent gesture, and they sat in surprisingly comfortable silence.

“The scones were very good, Annie,” said Malinowski, almost abruptly, when she had gathered up the tray. She flushed to the tips of her ears, and mumbled an inarticulate thanks as she left the room. Miss Marple smiled indulgently at her knitting. 

What Malinowski said next, surprisingly, was:

“What was your Fräulein like? The one who taught you German?”

“Oh,” said Miss Marple, “she was a very sentimental woman. Not at all the sort of person my mother had hoped for, really. But she taught me poetry — you know, “Am Brunnen vor dem Tore,” and the one with the King of Thule, and the one with the glove — and the language of flowers. Both useful in their own way; both provided, too, good training in noticing detail.”

“You notice a great many details, I imagine, Miss Marple.”

“Perhaps. One of them, of course, is that you have as great a faith in goodness as you have experience of wickedness.”

Her guest shifted slightly in the chintz armchair. “I am not at all sure that that is true, Miss Marple.”

“No, Mr. Malinowski? I had a great many opportunities of observing you at Bertram’s hotel. And you were always, if I may so express it, _attuned_ to people, even people you knew to be quite irrelevant to your work. Attuned to them and interested in them.”

Again that restless movement. “Perhaps.”

“Another way in which we are similar,” remarked Miss Marple complacently. “Now, Mr. Malinowski, there are several things I should like to ask you.” Her guest sat up a little straighter. “Do you have accommodation for the evening?”

A slight shake of the head. “I had thought of driving until I came to an inn.”

“Ah, well, you could do, of course — that splendid car of yours — but I’m afraid the roads hereabouts are very dark indeed after dusk, and rather narrow, and it wouldn’t do at all to end up in a ditch, would it? Not that you aren’t a skilled driver, but they really can be rather treacherous, as Mr. Inch was saying just the other day… oh yes, the second thing: do you have plans for your, er… do they call it compassionate leave?”

“They do.” He glanced down at his hands. “I do not.”

“Well!” Miss Marple clapped her hands together briskly. “In that case, I have a suggestion, Mr. Malinowski, and I hope you won’t think that I’m interfering at all, but I had influenza last winter and my nephew Raymond paid for a live-in nurse. The point _being_ ,” said Miss Marple, “that it wouldn’t take Annie very long to air out the back bedroom and put it to rights, if you were to consider staying. No no, it would be no imposition. Though you would be a nine days’ wonder in the village.”

Malinowski leaned back in the chair, and spread his hands in a gesture of acceptance. “Do you know, Miss Marple, I think I might rather enjoy being a nine days’ wonder.” She beamed at him. “You are very kind.”

“Oh, not at all. The company will be a pleasure. And if you were to think of staying on for a bit, there are good walks, and the dear vicar is quite a scholar who is always glad of conversation. In any case, you’ll have a bed for the night.”

“A luxurious certainty.”

“Yes.” Miss Marple regarded her guest thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose it would be. Well then, that’s settled. May I, Mr. Malinowski, tempt you to a glass of damson gin?”

**Author's Note:**

> I feel that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ed Stoppard's performance, as his Malinowski was a man of fascinating stillnesses. If you're interested in looking at a questionnaire that was part of the denazification process in Germany (though Malinowski alludes to work in Austria), you can find one here: http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/pdf/deu/30014796-r.pdf.
> 
> I'm a longtime Agatha Christie nerd, and all commentary is welcome. The Queen of Crime's timelines are of course something to tear the hair over, but though _At Bertram's Hotel_ was first published in 1965, I've set this in the fairly immediate aftermath of WWII.


End file.
